Suppose that you took a loan and bought a house then 20 years later you decide to sell it. Is it wrong to sell if for more then you paid for it, eg. cost + interest paid over the 20 years+ rates ? Would you have bought this house if you expected to sell it for less then you paid for it or did you speculate that you could sell it for above what you paid for it ?
Should we think wrong of you if you did any of the above  ?
And if I did the same but added a water tank and built a garden shed in the backyard then sold at a huge profit would it be wrong of you to think wrong of me ?

So FHB won't afford to buy it and will have to rent it, how is that going to to cause the bottom to fall out ?

Again, even the unemployed have to live somewhere.
Btw, single digit unemployment rates were considered low 20 years ago and even the most rabid bears only suggest that rates will only go up to around 7%-8% as worst case scenario. Only a few years ago the current unemployment rates were considered impossible to achieve.

From record highs, construction approvals are still below immigration intake.

And they going to leave on a park bench ? Come on, you can do better then this.

Oh goody, I remember the time when they removed it completely. Two years later they were begging investors to come back after house prices and rents skyrocketed. Since most investors are now positively geared or near it they can lock in the low rates for 10-15 years  and keep putting rents up every 6 months.  

Last time they reassessed the NG all the major banks were requiring a 25% deposit minimum. Didn't stop prices going silly.

1 – $250K ? There is plenty land available at $150K if you are prepared to travel. The only developers near the city are the small developers carving up their own backyards or buying 2-3 older houses on larger blocks and turning them in 6-7 townhouse lots.
2-Steel may be slightly cheaper but bricks went up. Not sure about Canberra but here in WA electricity prices are going up so guess which way the material prices are heading when energy cost are going up. Add to that the mandatory anti-GW and water saving devices that are added to the materials costs so we can pretend to help stop the GW. – ops, I meant climate changing.
3 – Compared to what , the Indian tradies ? That's just a rumor started by grossly overpaid executive to justify why the company is not making enough profits. Nothing to do with the $millions paid to executives for doing absolutely FA for most of the year and them handing them even more $millions in golden handshakes to get rid of the useless ones. Then move the jobs overseas because the labour is cheaper there. And what is our government doing other then handing them more of the taxpayers money ? SFA.  
4 – In case you haven't noticed the under $500K market is flying out the door and the REA's are doing alright. Besides, how is that going to reduce the replacement cost ?

You sure its not you who have been conditioned to see the 4 beddys as reasonable priced ?How much for that 4 beddy 3-4 years ago ? 
As long as they can afford the repayments now they can always lock in the fix rates when rates start to move up and be set for life. In 5 years time they will very likely pay a lot less in monthly repayments then you will to rent it out.  You can ridicule the poor buggers now for buying a house with little to no deposit but if in 5 years or so they decide to buy another place as PPOR and rent this house to you then we'll see who is going to have the last laugh.
Rent it for 20 years and you've just paid off the poor buggers IP

Wouldn't know about the top end, in my area things are a bit slow and some sellers have taken their properties of the market. I suppose that if you don't need to sell may as well wait until the inflation threat is over.
A couple of owners decided to move on in the past 2 months and sold for about $200K less then they could have got at the top. Don't know if they were forced to sell or not but since it only cost them around $250K for the H&L back in '02  I doubt they'll be too upset about walking away with only a $600K & a $750K profit. 

Just wondering, has the $5.5M always been the selling price in Palm Beach or did they ever sell for $500K or less sometime in the past ? 

ummester wrote:

harb wrote:

So how many below $350K in Homebush Bay ? For the price of one unit there I could get almost 2 in Bankstown (or a house on 600sqm block) which is about the same distance from CBD. 
The shortage is of well priced apartments and of land. If price is no object man can always build upwards, the sky is the limit, but God doesn't make more land.

Never knew you were religious Harb?

I'm not but that's besides the point. Are you saying that someone IS making more land ?

Maybe in Canberra where there are still vast spaces between the suburbs. For other capital cities there is no land to develop near the CBD, even the older properties on 700sqm+ blocks have already been subdivided.
Of course Australia has no shortage of land, take Perth for eg.  Plenty of land around $150K and some even have fencing and limestone retaining walls included. Add a $150K for the house, add another $50K for landscape and finishing and you have your own house for the bargain price of around $350K.  Yes, it may be 60 Km from the CBD and if you work in the city it may take you 2hrs to go to work and 3 hrs to come back but if you are after budget land there is plenty of that around.
But I suppose you'd like something in walking distance from CBD for that price, right ? 

 And what exactly do you expect to happen then, people moving out of properties and into cardboard boxes ?  I've heard some rumors that there are some unemployed people living in rentals right now, if these are true then I expect not much will change when the unemployment rate goes up 2-3%. Unless the rents go up too much because of a decrease in FHBs and increase in renters in which case the government has to increase the rental assistance to the unemployed living in private rentals.  

I don't disagree with your opinion that Sydney is the best place to buy IPs at the moment, just the reasons for it. 

foundation wrote:

You clearly haven't been keeping your eye on the inflation figures that are coming through.

How are them inflation figures coming along, still keeping your eye on them ?

While we waiting for a reply from the NWO believers I'm putting the same questions to the GW worriers,

Does worrying about something that may happen in 100 years, something that even the "experts" can't agree on and  something that despite our fat big egos its very likely beyond our control help you sleep better at night ? 
Will the constant scaremongering and  moving goalposts cause you to "live a longer, happier life" , help you "make money", "enrich or detract from others lives"  or  will it cause you to live in constant fear, cost you money and make you reach for the antidepressants every time you hear the words GW ?

And how does GW theory  fit in with the fact that it took 100 years to break the 1908 heatwave record ? Since humans didn't start mass polluting for a few more years was there an outbreak of bovine Viral Gastroenteritis causing excessive flatulence that could be blamed for the 1908 heatwaves ?

Sorry young investor01, can't recommend any .I had a look at a few different types about  1.5-2 years ago and decided to stick to solid timber, but it was for myself not the IPs. Price is reasonable and so is the warranty, if you are not sure maybe you can get 1 pack and give it a good test.  Maybe someone else here can reccomend a brand.
The worst one I saw looked like MDF covered with some vinyl (ish) looking coating not unlike contact paper. I did a quick "car keys test" on the sample on display  and was easy to scratch and the top coating came apart quite easily . Probably alright  if you walked on it bare footed and cover the traffic area with rugs.

Yes to both.
 

Thanks, I'll remember that next time I'm thinking of buying property in US.  If you follow the ghpc textbook  you'll probably mention  Japan next. 

It still is, instead of the 40%+ predicted I've only seen 3% falls across the nation and rental returns going up by 10%.  The best your buddies can come up with is point to a few US cities were  the declining population has caused massive prices over decades and then use that to extrapolate 40%+ price falls in here.  That may work on some outback mining town when the only mine in town shuts down but  to infer that it will happen across the board in our capital cities just goes to show how delusional they are.
Of course property can occasionally fail, specially if you don't do your homework, but overall its still the best long term investment and the past 12 months proved it. 

Sorry but I don't see any law forcing someone to buy dreams, not even the affordable ones.  What I do see hundreds of people with just enough money to dream a Hyunday Getz camping in front of the Mercedes showroom and salivating over the shiny A170 in the window.  Their dream  is that nobody will buy it and the dealer will have to drop the price 60% making it affordable to them.  It is possible that one of them may end up driving away in his dream A170 but  the rest of them will have to return to dreaming Hyundai.  Only by now the Hyundai dealer has sold all his existing stock to more realistic dreamers and because of the falling AUD has had to put up prices by 30%.  So instead of a nice dream they end up having a self-induced nightmare.
So the moral of this dream is that while there is nothing wrong with salivating over the A170 keep a close eye on the number of Getz still available or you could end up with a nightmare.

Depends of where are you buying, the price range  you are looking to buy, are buying to rent it out or live in it yourself, is your job reasonably secure, etc. 

You could ask the experts but after the last time ….

You've answered your own question, people still need a roof over their heads and buying a low end property is getting cheaper then renting.